KRB5-SYNC-BACKEND(8) krb5-sync KRB5-SYNC-BACKEND(8)
NAME
krb5-sync-backend - Manipulate Kerberos password and status change queue
SYNOPSIS
krb5-sync-backend -h
krb5-sync-backend (disable|enable) user
krb5-sync-backend (help|list)
krb5-sync-backend [-s] process
krb5-sync-backend password user ad < password
krb5-sync-backend purge days
DESCRIPTION
krb5-sync-backend provides an interface to the queue of pending password and account status changes written by either this utility or by
the synchronization plugin after failures. It can queue account enables, disables, or password changes for Active Directory, list the
queued actions, or process the queued actions with krb5-sync (telling it to take its action from a file).
The queue directory will contain files with names in the format:
<username>-<domain>-<action>-<timestamp>-<count>
where <username> is the name of the affected account ("/" will be replaced with "." in the file name and the realm will be removed),
<domain> is "ad", <action> is either "enable" (used for both enabling and disabling accounts) or "password", <timestamp> is a ISO 8601
timestamp in UTC, and <count> is a two-digit zero-padded number between 0 and 99 (so that we can handle multiple changes that arrive in the
same second). Each file contains a queued change in the format described in krb5-sync(8).
Supported arguments to krb5-sync-backend are:
disable user
Queue a disable action (in Active Directory, as that's the only system currently supported for enable and disable) for user.
enable user
Queue an enable action (in Active Directory, as that's the only system currently supported for enable and disable) for user.
help
List the supported commands.
list
List the current contents of the queue.
process
Process the queue. All queued actions will be sorted alphanumerically (which due to the timestamp means that all changes for a
particular user of a particular type will be done in the order queued). krb5-sync will be called for each queued action, as long as it
continues to succeed. If it fails for a queued action, all other actions sharing the same username, domain, and action will be skipped
and queue processing will continue with the next action that differs in one of those three parameters.
password user ad < password
Queue a password change for user in Active Directory, setting their password to password. By default, password is read from standard
input. It can also be passed as a command-line argument, but this is less secure since the password is then readable by anyone on the
system who can see the command-line arguments of processes.
The entire standard input is taken as the password, including any trailing newlines, so be careful how the password is provided. If
using something like echo, use "echo -n" or the "c" flag, depending on your system.
purge days
Delete all queued actions last modified longer than days days ago. This can be used to clean up old failed change propagations in
situations where accounts may be created or have password changes queued that are later removed and never created in other
environments.
OPTIONS
-h, --help
Display this documentation (by running this script through "perldoc -t" and exit. All other options and commands are ignored.
-s, --silent
When running the process command, filter out the output of krb5-sync to ignore common errors and success messages and only show
uncommon errors. This option will filter out all output when krb5-sync is successful and will filter out error messages matching:
^AD password change for S+ failed (3):.*Authentication error$
^AD status change for S+ failed (1): user .* not found in S+$
even when it fails. (This message generally means the account doesn't exist in Active Directory.) The regexes can be modified at the
start of this script.
FILES
/usr/sbin/krb5-sync
The path to the krb5-sync utility. This may be changed at the top of this script.
/var/spool/krb5-sync
The default path to the queue. This must match the queue_dir parameter in krb5.conf used by the plugin. It can be changed at the top
of this script.
/var/spool/krb5-sync/.lock
An empty file used for locking the queue. When writing to or querying the queue, krb5-sync-backend will open and lock this file with
the Perl flock function, which normally calls flock(2). Any other queue writers need to use the same locking mechanism for safe
operation.
SEE ALSO
krb5-sync(8)
The current version of this program is available from its web page at http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/krb5-sync/
<http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/krb5-sync/>.
AUTHOR
Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>
2.2 2012-01-10 KRB5-SYNC-BACKEND(8)